


The Moon, a Gentle Lady

by Astrid_B_Caine



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Fluff and Mush, Leapfic, M/M, Podfic Welcome, Short, Weird Fluff, Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:59:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1806169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrid_B_Caine/pseuds/Astrid_B_Caine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam leaps where no Sam had leaped before. </p><p>Originally published in fanzine: Quantum Instability 1, by Quantum Fire Press. 1993, under the pseudonym Astrid Boötes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Moon, a Gentle Lady

## The Moon, a Gentle Lady  
by Astrid Boötes

_Written 1-1993_

 

He stood in the darkness, watching.

A spring breeze ruffled the curtains slightly. In the other room, the grandfather clock faithfully kept time, soothing with its familiar rhythm. Light from a sky full of stars shone in through the window, bathing the body in the bed with an unearthly glow...

It felt strange to be here again. But what he had experienced in this night felt even stranger. It was beyond words, there existed none to describe it. In all the languages he had studied and learned by heart, he could find none that fitted his situation.

And even if he had found one, he wouldn't have been able to speak it. He simply stood in the glow of starlight. Unmoving. Watching. 

There was no moon, only the stars. And yet its absence was so poignant, it tugged at the memory of a song in his mind. He tried to catch it and hummed a few notes softly in a tentative attempt to rekindle the words that had moved him so long ago. 

How long had it been? He couldn't remember. But slowly - like the movement of an old rocking chair - the lyrics to the song came to him.

_When stars were there for wishing on_  
_and nights were there for dreams._  
_And rockets were bright fantasies_  
_upon my t.v. screen._  
_The Moon a gentle Lady_  
_with a dark and smiling face._  
_That shines through my bedroom window_  
_from her distant home in space.*_

He chanted the words softly as they came from a forgotten place in his heart. They seemed to fill his body - the professor's body - like they had many years ago, when he had heard it for the first time. He had been about this young boy's age, he realised, never taking his eyes off the huddled form. This boy, who was sleeping so peacefully, oblivious to all the world and the miracle their love-making had been.

No matter how hard Sam looked at the boy, he still felt strange. Wondrous and strange. The feeling was almost illusive in its fragility. And he dared not move, for fear of losing it forever.

But he needn't have worried, as the night was still at its deepest and the stars at their brightest. Sam gazed out the window and greeted the stars with a sigh. They seemed to shine just for them. They seemed to know this night the impossible had happened. 

And indeed, it was something he had never even dreamed of, never even imagined. He quickly reasoned that Al might have, taking the Admiral's vivid imagination in to account. But then again...

_Al!_

How would he ever be able to explain this to Al? His safest bet probably would be, not even to try. But Sam knew he wouldn't be able to keep something like this a secret from his best friend. He always seemed to look right through him. And at the most embarrassing moments, too. No, he couldn't hide this from Al. But explaining might prove to be very difficult.

_Ah well._ He turned his gaze back to his lover for one night, _we'll cross that bridge later,_ he thought, _much later._

The figure on the bed stirred a little, stretching himself out in catlike fashion. The oddest feeling came over Sam at the sight of the obviously contented creature on the bed. 

_Did I do that,_ he wondered. Al had told him to relax the awkward youth, so he would be able to face something tomorrow. Something. What? Al had mentioned it, but now, in the magic of the night, he couldn't remember. 

He'd relaxed the kid alright. He should have known this would happen before he walked in with his eyes open, but he must have selectively swiss-cheesed on that piece of information too. Now he remembered all to clearly.

All thought disappeared from his ever active mind, as he beheld the impossibility slowly waking on his bed.

The youth seemed totally relaxed after the loving Sam couldn't refuse him. Which the professor had, Sam remembered. There was no way of knowing how he'd changed their lives now.

The kid cracked one lazy eye open to stare at Sam, who was, unknown to Sam himself, silhouetted by starlight. And the sight very obviously met with approval.

Sam sat down on the bed, to brush some white hairs from the boy's forehead for no reason in particular, except wanting to. The white lock imbedded in the thick mob of brown hair seemed irresistible and Sam finally understood Al's fascination with his own white strand of hair. 

_After making love, Al always combed my own sweat soaked hair with his fingers like that,_ Sam reflected absently. _How he must miss the nights of sweet heated loving we used to share._ His heart started to ache for his former lover as he looked down upon his new temporary one.

"I dreamed that you were singing, Sebastian," the boy said softly, while reaching out to Sam to take him in his arms. Sam gratefully lay down again and let himself be held by the one person he never thought he would be held by. He basked in the glow of doing once more, that which couldn't be done.

"You were singing so beautifully," the young man continued, "that I wished I could love you all over again." He seemed to grow uncertain again, and his voice trailed off at the end of his thoughts.

Sam's heart went out to the shy boy, knowing exactly how he felt. He gave the young one a squeeze and found he had the urge to run his fingers through the inviting lock of hair once again. This time he resisted.

"What kind of song was that, Professor?" the kid's voice was dreamy, and he was obviously on the verge of becoming very mushy. "'S so beautiful. I've never heard it before." 

Sam realised it was a few years too early for the kid to know that song, so he sat up again, the boy following suit the way a lost puppy follows its mother. 

"I'll teach it to you," Sam offered. And he started softly, "'When stars were there for wishing on, and nights were there for dreams...'"

The youth picked it up almost immediately and they sang it together. They made a perfect harmony, with voices so much alike that they seemed like one and the same.

And all the while Sam wondered how he was ever going to explain, making love and teaching a song from the future to this 20 year old PHD student, called Sam Beckett.

_... from her distant home in space_

_* From a filk singer at a con. I don't know the lady's name, but she sang it beautifully._


End file.
